


Plain and Simple

by veroniquemagique



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F, God love those couple parallels, I couldn't resist, M/M, old ladies in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 04:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10779888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veroniquemagique/pseuds/veroniquemagique
Summary: How could they not see it between their ex-wives when they watched it grow for decades between themselves?





	Plain and Simple

It’s an attempt at something like normal. It’s the first time they’ve all really been together since the art show, since the first time they tried to make things okay. And things would have to be okay eventually, they were all part of one big family, even if it wasn’t in the same configuration as the past four decades, or two, depending on how you look at it. What better place to start than over dinner? Most of their major life changes in the past few years have taken place over dinner, why not one for the better?

And they can hear their ex-wives before they even open the door. They’re already arguing about something, it’s hard to tell through the door, but something about salt comes up in a pointed tone from the raised voice that clearly belongs to Grace.

“Grace, Frankie,” Robert says with open arms as he opens the door. Frankie’s hand is wrapped through Grace’s arm, like she’s holding her favourite doll close so to not lose it. Grace smiles coolly and leads the two into the house. It feels warmer than the place she used to call home. There’s something real and tangible about this warmth, more than a mere visage that Robert and Sol project to the outside world.

Grace accepts a curt hug from Robert, the kind of greeting she used to afford to her old friends, but that’s followed by the kind of hug she has come to expect from Frankie, except it’s Sol and his round, expressive puppy eyes that are behind it in this case.

Frankie immediately engages – or attempts to engage – in a conversation about the Feng Shui of the house with Robert, since clearly, she assumes, he would understand the importance of it the most. Grace makes a snarky comment to Sol about her countless fruitless attempt to rearrange the beach house – even Grace’s own bedroom – but he can’t help notice the grin as she shakes her head at the rambling woman.

Grace asks how the retired life is treating them, and she swears that Sol was about to blubber like a child, if it weren’t for Robert’s comforting pat upon the shoulder. In turn they ask about the ever-so-vibrant vibrator business, and Frankie informs them that Grace has finally allowed her to work on the easy open condoms, and her newest sister idea – easy open dental dams. There are never enough of those around, she insists. Robert watches his ex-wife in that moment, but she refuses to make eye contact with anyone or anything but the fascinating artwork on the adjacent wall. She chews her lip, and he can’t remember a time he’s ever seen her do that, not in forty years of marriage.

When Sol casually mentions the stroke, Frankie’s face sours, and Grace’s hand instinctively reaches for hers. Their fingers fit together like a puzzle they’ve memorized, and she gives it a comforting squeeze, for as much as she harps on Frankie about watching her salt intake or taking her pills or her blood pressure, she knows that the fear of it all scares the living shit out of the woman. She also knows that despite his big heart and good intentions, Frankie’s ex-husband is sometimes quite oblivious to her feelings.

Idle chatter that neither pair really cares for continues for a while, until Sol invites Grace to help him with dessert – he makes a haphazard joke about trusting the either of two with dietary concerns in the kitchen, but the underlying truth of it drags Grace out of her chair and into the other room behind him. She lives with it every day, finding secret stashes of Tater Tots or Gummy Bears hidden in the strangest places, that Frankie insists are from ages ago and she forgot about. Once she tried that while she was high and in the process of eating a fresh bag of chips – needless to say, it’s hardly convincing.

“Grace,” Sol says, hesitating, his mouth opening and closing as though he cannot find the right words to express what he wants to say. Grace gives him a look that doubles as a cautious warning to just spit it out.

“You really shouldn’t be so tactless about Frankie and the stroke, Sol,” Grace says, before he can add anything else. “You were married to her for forty years, you know how she gets about these sort of things. I’ll be damned if she doesn’t try to raid a convenience store on the trip home.”

Except he doesn’t know that, he thinks to himself. Frankie never let herself get so outwardly concerned about her health before, and because she never, he never gave it a second thought. This is new, this is because of Grace, but that’s not bad, because Frankie could probably use someone who cares enough to call her on her bullshit. He could never bring himself to do that, it felt far too hypocritical, when he harboured so much bullshit of his own.

“I noticed you haven’t had a single martini tonight,” Sol says, watching Grace glance back to the dining room, lips pursed. The look on her face says that she hadn’t even realized that fact, but was still not entirely surprised.

“Thank Frankie for that – she’s always on my case about it.” She shakes her head as she takes a sip of her water and watches Sol cut the sugar-free, gluten-free, low fat, low cholesterol pie he prepared the day before. “‘You’re a walking pickle, Grace’, ‘it really upsets me to see you with that martini glass all the time, Grace’, ‘stop drowning your feelings in vodka, Grace’,” she sighs, and he hears the same tone as when Robert finally relents and admits that Sol is, in fact, right about something. In the end, he always listens, because he knows it comes from a place of love. Sol is a sentimental man, and this conversation brings back distant memories of their earlier days together. Not-so-subtle suggestions that Robert shouldn’t work so late, should go home and rest, even if it meant being away from him. You do what’s best for the people you love.

Just before they prepare to return, Frankie and Robert are similarly situated in conversation back at the table, where they were left to themselves. The last time they really spoke was about vibrator labels and Santa Fe, and leaving Grace behind to run off with her now ex-boyfriend. Whether or not, or rather, _how_ to tell Grace that she might leave. In all those years of knowing Frankie Bergstein, Robert had never seen her so unsure of herself, so incapable of just going with the flow and following what seemed to be her dreams. Clearly though, Santa Fe wasn’t her dream. Jacob wasn’t her dream. And she had stayed with Grace.

“You spent all those years living with Grace,” Frankie goes on, as she has been for about five whole minutes, discussing the nuances of her life with Grace. “Did you ever notice that she owns a lot of shirts with birds on them? Almost every day she wears one! And to think she won’t budge on us getting chickens. Hypocrite.”

To be honest, Robert never really noticed what Grace wore, except to recognize that she always looked damn good when she wore it. Like he told Sol, it was a thrill to walk into a room with Grace on his arm. Then again, when Frankie walked into his house earlier that evening with Grace on _her_ arm, she didn’t seem to care what either of them thought of her, or of Grace. She was just happy to be there, happy to be with her. The only thing it made Robert notice now was how little he had truly appreciated just being with Grace in comparison, regardless of how she looked. Like he was slowly learning to be with Sol, but Frankie was already leagues ahead of him in that department.

Before Robert could respond to that however, Grace and Sol reentered, toting two servings of pie each. It was very unlike Grace to eat dessert, Robert thought. Maybe Frankie encouraged that too.

There was something to the way Grace reached around Frankie to give her the pie, the gentle squeeze of her shoulder as she handed her the small fork, the way she bit her lip – again – as she sat down, watching Frankie test out the “health nut pie”, as she aptly put it. Even as she took bird-like bites of her own pie, her eyes seemed trained on Frankie the whole time, not with concern but something else, as if being there next to Frankie was sweeter than any dessert Grace would fight with herself to eat. Robert and Sol watched their ex-wives, and they were starting to recognize what they saw, as Frankie glanced back at Grace and stuck out her tongue, stuck her finger in her pie and smeared it down Grace’s nose. Grace laughed, she actually laughed, when they expected her to groan or even yell, and she did it back. There was something unspoken between them, something neither Robert nor Sol had seen in either of them before. Something they had only ever seen in each other.

As Grace made sure Frankie didn’t forget her purse – although, these days, who knew if it was actually Frankie’s, or if it was Grace’s – and they bid their goodbyes to their exes, Robert and Sol shared a look. Through the closed door, they could faintly hear the women laughing their way to the car, to which they were presumably walking arm in arm, just like they had entered. Off to the house that they shared since the divorces, from which they had built a home over the past few years. To watch a cheesy movie together under a shared blanket, or maybe get high and watch the waves in the sand. Regardless, they were together.

To the men who had known those women, and each other’s love for decades, it was plain and simple. They were in love.


End file.
